photo credit: courtesy of Santa Rosa Fire Department
Santa Rosa Fire Department vehicle.

Strong winds caused widespread damage and even took a life in Santa Rosa over the weekend. Gusty winds up to 60 miles per hour in some Bay Area locations over the weekend tumbled trees and sent branches crashing dangerously all over Sonoma County.

Paul Lowenthal, Division Chief Fire Marshall with the Santa Rosa Fire Department, says there were two wind-related injuries on Sunday, one of them fatal.

"One involved a tree limb that struck a 65-year-old male,” said Lowenthal. “That individual was transported to an area hospital where he was pronounced deceased. A second individual, a 23-year-old female at a different location, was also struck by a tree branch. That individual sustained major injuries and was transported to an area hospital."

Lowenthal says typically, we don't see these kind of injuries from a wind event.

"We primarily see a lot more of our quote, unquote wind events as associated with a winter, winter storm,” Lowenthal said. “And oftentimes when those are happening, and we have trees coming down and winds and the rain that results in power outages, most people are indoors."

Cyndi Foreman, Division Chief Fire Marshall for the Sonoma County Fire District, describes the kinds of calls fire personnel were responding to:

"Lots of hazardous conditions related to trees down, large branches in the roadway creating concerns for drivers,” said Foreman. “Actually creating egress and access issues for some of our communities."

Foreman says there were small fires as well.

"Some small vegetation fires that were caused by power lines down,” said Foreman. “And ironically enough, that wasn't necessarily up in the hills, a lot of that was kind of down in our valley floors. So we had like three of them sort of in the Larkfield/Fulton area."

Besides causing problems over the weekend, Foreman says that this wind event made things worse for the upcoming fire season.

"We're gonna start to see conditions here in Sonoma County that are historically more like mid-July than mid- to late-May, which is where we're at right now. So, this actually had a significant impact on our fuel moistures, and with the warmer weather, that also can have a significant effect on it."

PG&E did preemptively shut off power to about 4700 customers across 15 counties this weekend, including some in Sonoma County.